Posted on 04/18/2005 9:35:59 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
Four million copies of Time magazine hit the streets today naming San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy one of the three worst big-city mayors in America.
Murphy defiantly dismissed the designation and counterpunched the country's top-selling news magazine from his driveway yesterday.
"People should be proud of what we have accomplished in this city," he said. "Tell Time magazine that they just don't understand what's going on."
Murphy said more negative national news won't affect tourism or the city's faltering financial outlook, but he said it could jeopardize business recruitment and the chances of being picked as the headquarters for the state's new stem cell institute.
Businessman Ted Roth, one of Murphy's most ardent supporters, said the low ranking won't stop the mayor from solving San Diego's mounting fiscal crisis, but critics described the article as a wake-up call.
"This is doing damage to us for a generation," said City Attorney Michael Aguirre, who called for the mayor's resignation Friday night.
Mitch Mitchell, vice president for public policy at the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, said the latest rap on Murphy's reputation will "fuel the call for him to step down."
How this would affect a possible Murphy recall, which can't begin until June, is unclear. Supporters of the mayor said people inclined to back a recall already have reasons. Even his critics said he still has time to address the city's problems.
Talk of a recall began in political circles shortly after Murphy was sworn in to his second term.
Former Port Commissioner Peter Q. Davis, who lost mayoral races to Murphy in 2000 and 2004, said the ridicule has to hurt the mayor and city.
"Now the problems have spread beyond his abilities of damage control and they're becoming a national joke," Davis said. "We're going to become like Cleveland, which came to be known as The Mistake by the Lake."
Last year, national news headlines dubbed San Diego "Enron by the Sea" for its mounting pension deficit, federal investigations into its retirement system and subsequent allegations of illegal accounting and public corruption.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI are more than a year into their investigations. The city attorney and the county district attorney are also separately investigating possible wrongdoing with the pension system.
The $3.6 billion San Diego City Employees Retirement System has a deficit of at least $1.4 billion, caused largely by benefit increases and deliberate city underfunding. The investigations have delayed two annual financial audits and prevented San Diego from borrowing money at low interest rates, jeopardizing water and sewer upgrades, new fire stations and new libraries.
The Time story on big-city mayors said Murphy is "discredited" by the pension mess. The article ranks the five best and three worst big-city mayors in America and is spread over seven pages of the issue that hits newsstands today.
Murphy is lumped in with the mayors of Detroit and Philadelphia as the worst.
The magazine cited Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick for cutting 3,000 city positions and ending 24-hour bus service while maintaining his 21-person security detail and the city paid nearly $25,000 to lease a sport utility vehicle for his wife. Philadelphia Mayor John Street made the list because of a "naked shakedown for donations to Street's 2003 re-election campaign" by one of the mayor's close friends and fundraisers.
The mayors of Chicago, Atlanta, Denver, Baltimore and New York City were named the five best.
The top mayors include Atlanta's Shirley Franklin and Denver's John Hickenlooper, both of whom inherited budget deficits and turned them into surpluses during their first terms. Franklin cut city jobs and raised taxes. Hickenlooper persuaded city employees to accept less pay and mandatory leave days.
The rankings were not quantitative; they were based on interviews conducted in each community, said Time spokesman Ty Trippet. The report didn't factor in, for example, a mayor's approval ratings or a city's bond ratings, he said.
The article says Time consulted with "urban experts" to make its selections. It considered how mayors in the 29 biggest cities are handling problems but only conducted interviews in select cities, Trippet said.
One of those interviewed about Murphy was Carl DeMaio, a frequent City Hall critic and president of The Performance Institute, a private business that advocates budget accountability in government.
"Now the public at large and not just the financial community knows that San Diego has an emperor without clothes," DeMaio said.
Murphy backer Roth said the Time article would have no effect.
"I think everyone knows that we have issues," he said. "The mayor is doing the right things, and ultimately we will come out of this."
But Murphy's support has suffered since March 2003 when business leaders rallied around the mayor to persuade him to reconsider his decision not to seek re-election.
Mitchell, the chamber spokesman, said the mayor needs to become "more involved than any mayor has had to be in regard to city operations."
Murphy brushed off questions about the impact the article might have on a possible recall.
He was more worried about the article's effect on getting the stem cell center. San Diego is competing with San Francisco, Sacramento and Emeryville and is ranked third on a list by the committee choosing the site.
"When we have negative articles about the city it gives an excuse for those in Northern California to say that's where they ought to be located," Murphy said.
If I were this mayor, I'd be highly offended that Time lumped me in with the hip hop mayor of Detroit. I'd be further offended if they ranked me higher than mayor hip hop on that list. No mayor ever in the history of the world could be more worthless than Kwame. He is a perfect fit with our worthless canadian governor--they both are adept at blaming someone else for their vast incompetence.
If you're in the same company as "Navigator" Kwame......Ouch!
Remember Coleman Young????
lol.. to both Kwame and Coleman. ;-)
Geez, it's always nice nice to live in a state AND a city that our worst is national news. First Davis and now Murphy! Oh, the shame of it all!
True..
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FR archive search results..
That little san diego pension scandal hasn't helped much either.. ;-)
I remember Coolman very well. Coolman was adept at using Milliken and powerful people like Henry Ford II and Max Fisher. Kwame is too inept to use people other than Jenny from the block, but that's probably because she is even more inept than he is, not a tribute to his abilities as a politician. I still say Kwame is the worst.
Cuba is looking pretty good about now. ;-)
{{{{ Ping-a-ling }}}}
Actually, this is all Roger Hedgecock's fault. He supported this guy - not me - I didn't vote for him. But Roger bad-mouthed Murphy's opponent - and that was it - Murphy won. I was very upset about it.
The Dem conquering of that nasty GOP hold-out called San Diego is nearly complete.
Yup, I am at a loss where to move in a few years,, Oregon , Washington, Nevada? dang , I am so not sure of where is there a clean well-run place to retire too.
Cuba is looking pretty good about now. ;-)
I hear ya.
We HAVE to leave.
Cannot afford to live here.
Not with him retiring and he's a medical doctor.
You might look at the South. It's pretty, friendly
and the cost of living is most reasonable. Leaving
family behind is a whole other matter.
The County GOP supported Murphy's reelection. So did the San Diego Union-Tribune. Everyone acknowledge the scandals, fiscal mess and Murphy's involvement but said, that's ok... he's "detail oriented" and is best suited to plod through. And, let's not forget, *NO ONE* was really on top of the Donna Frye thing. Hedgecock *should've* spearheaded an effort before the election since he was in a bit of a unique position as a former mayor and one-time lawyer. He refused saying he doesn't get his hands dirty. Sickening. So we ended up with all the attention on Frye rather than the legitimate challenger. Murphy was weak to begin with, now he's basically a marginalized puppet. Thanks to the election controversy, he has no real political capital to spend even if he knew what to do with it.
I think folks forget that Roger is a disgraced ex-mayor. Sure some of the felony charges were tossed later by the state supreme court *BUT* he did end up pleading *guilty* to misdemeanor charges. He was not actually innocent, just not as guilty as he had been made out to be. Even now, he's thinks the way of a politician: talk a good game, make a good PR show of it, line his pockets while not really making a difference. If there's really movement, he'll latch on to get credit...
I think you'd agree, the Dems have done a magnificent snowjob in San Diego with Aguirre, Frye, indictments, a brain-dead media, union rabble-rousers, the cross distraction... they have phenominal political accumen. It's awe-inspiring.
I'm so stunned by the events of the past year, I can hardly think clearly about how to alter the course of things.
IMHO, Murphy does deserve to be on the list. But it's a symptom of the larger disease. The Dems are political grandmasters and play a long term strategy. The GOP might be winning consecutive elections but they've already lost the future. San Diego's following the Dem's conquering plan for cities... unions, immigrants, media...
Poor old Philadelphia. Back in the glory days of Mayor Goode, Philly would have been at the bottom of the list. That was back when mayors could drop bombs into residential neighborhoods and fiddle while whole city blocks burned to the ground.
Wait a minute. Hedgecock hasn't had a good word to say about Murphy since he got elected the first time. He calls him "Mayor Yellow Jacket" after his feckless performance during the big fires (in which he donned a yellow firefighter's jacket while he stood around looking concerned and doing nothing). Wasn't Roger a supporter of Ron Roberts in the most recent election?
Richard Daley of Chicago was Time's number one pick and San Fran's Gavin Newsom got honorable mention. That says a lot about the story.
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